‘Sankalp Forum’ one of the world’s largest aggregation of social enterprises beings in Mumbai, april 16’th.

The Sankalp Forum brings together impact based social enterprises that are geared towards building solutions for an under-served population.

These are enterprises that work across India to create impact – in the areas of healthcare, education,clean energy (renewable), technology for development and agri businesses.

In attendance will be representatives from UNDP, USAID, The World Bank, IFC, Village Capital, Villgro, German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), Department of Industrial Development (DFID UK Governments grant arm ), GIZ ( German Governments grant arm) , Akshaya Patra, Deshpande Foundation, Ashoka Singapore Advisory Council, Legatum and other stakeholders in this will be swarming Renaissance Powai on 16th, 17th and 18th of April 2013.

Sankalp’s Annual Summit is the largest social enterprises focused gathering in the World. In its 5th year, Sankalp’s Annual Summit has now become the largest social enterprise focused gathering in the world, and in 2013 it partnered with Unconvention to become the Sankalp Unconvention Summit.

Young Turks, over the past eight years, showcased entrepreneurs attempting to address real problems in education, healthcare, skills development and access to finance through innovative models. The show partnered with the World Economic Forum and the Schwab Foundation to recognize social change agents via the India Social Entrepreneur Awards for the last eight years.

This year YT join hands with the Sankalp Forum and Intellecap Initiative. Sankalp recognises and supports innovative, sustainable, high impact social enterprises. Over the last four years, it has mentored 100’s of social entrepreneurs and facilitated over USD 120 million in equity investments in more than 30 enterprises.

The Sankalp Social Enterprise Awards were organized to recognise the best social enterprise models in five major categories. They are agriculture, food and rural business, clean energy technology, education, vocational training, healthcare, water and sanitisation and technology for development.

Although there are no official rankings, it sure appeared like last year’s Sankalp Forum was the largest social enteprise conference in India. But by linking up with Villgro, which runs the UnConvention – also focused on harnessing entrepreneurship to assist the poor – it’s now indisputable that Sankalp is THE largest conference of its kind in India, and perhaps anywhere else in Asia.

Considering the rapid scale up of the conference, I wanted to find out what Sankalp would look like in 2013, specifically on April 16 through April 18 – the dates of the conference in Mumbai. For more, I spoke with Sankalp Forum Director Aparajita Agrawal. The theme of this year’s summit is ‘Looking Beyond Impact: Seeking Transformational Change’. As a media partner for the Sankalp Forum, NextBillion readers can receive a 30 percent discount by the exclusive partner code “SUSPD” while booking your seat. For more details on agenda and to register, click here.

Scott Anderson: This year Intellecap, which created the Sankalp Forum and Villgro, the creator of Unconvention, teamed up. The result is the Sankalp Unconvention Summit 2013. Beyond the name, how has this partnership affected the conference?

Aparajita Agrawal: The move to come together with Villgro’s Unconvention was a first step towards consolidating the social enterprise space in India. There are several fragmented efforts to support social entrepreneurs in various ways, but such collaboration between two industry leaders will amplify what can be achieved.

It is well understood that Social Enterprises work at some of the most pressing problems we have as a society and country. They have a clear aim to maximize impact and social sustainability while being sustainable themselves. If the need to bring about positive impact among underprivileged populations is at the core of a social enterprise’s reason to exist, how is this then measured?

Are numbers the best way to measure impact? Have numbers served social enterprises well in their journey? Should we tell stories and not focus on the numbers? What does BIG data say, or not say?

How much impact, along the value chain, can a social enterprise claim for? Can a farming livelihood enterprise extend its impact to say it has been responsible for its stakeholders sending their children to private schools to be educated? How can impact be communicated?

In a remote village of Gujarat, when Babubhai, 17, invented a contraption to ward off pests using local material; he wanted to share the invention with other farmers in all the villages of India so that they could benefit too.

Awaaz De, which literally means “give voice,” caters to people like Babubhai who want to be heard but are not connected enough to do so. Avaaj Otalo (meaning “voice stoop”), Awaaz De’s first application in the domain of voice-based technology, helps farmers and agricultural organizations in Gujarat to disseminate and receive information over mobile phones through the medium of voice.

However, Awaaz De is not just limited to the field of agriculture. It has applications in the areas of education, women empowerment, labor welfare, healthcare etc. “Awaaz De aims to bridge the communication gap in the development sector broadly,” Neil Patel, 30, co-founder of Awaaz De, says. While Awaaz De is used by educational organizations, for instance, to inform students’ illiterate parents about parent-teacher meetings or by labor-welfare organizations in Bihar to spread awareness about National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (NREGA); it is also used in some unconventional ways. A poet records his poetry, adding some background music, and uploads it to Awaaz De to share it with his fans across India and to get their feedback through the same medium. During the Gujarat elections, Awaaz De was used to give real-time update on results.